Re: CHAT: Japanese English (was Re: Correction, I hope, of M/C URL)

At 20:22 19/03/00 -0500, you wrote:
>
>But while we're on the topic, a friend of mine who's a fan of Sailor
>Moon told me that in the Japanese they throw in English randomly, like
>Sailor Moon is actually _seraa muun_, or something like that!  And
>apparently all the attacks are in English as well.  While I'm sure the
>kids who watch it have no trouble, you've gotta wonder what their
>parents think.  :-)
>
It's simply the way Japanese people with little English knowledge pronounce
English words (BTW, I'm a fan of Sailor Moon too :) ). Sailor Moon is
pronounced in Japanese [se:ra:mu:n]. Sailor Mars is pronounced
[se:ra:ma:su] (with very short u at the end). And if you want a very
distorted word, Sailor Pluto is pronounced [se:ra:puru:to] :)) . The
transformation phrases and the attacks are in English too, that's true, but
really pronounced in a Japanese way (like "Fire Soul", the attack of Sailor
Mars, which becomes [Paja::: suru] (P is the bilabial fricative).

But the words are not randomly put, they are just taken out of their usual
use, thus they appear as if they were used randomly. For instance, "Sailor"
in Sailor Moon functions really like a title (general, captain, or whatever
you want), and adding a name after a title (even a name of planet) is
nothing wrong :) (note: Sailor is really a Japanese name: it refers to the
girls uniforms they wear in Japanese schools. It just happens to be a
borrowing from English) The fact that they are not correct English is not
important here: it's Japanese after all :)

>A good article about this phenomenon is at
>http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/040499japan-language-review.html
>
I'll look at it :) .

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)